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Aussies stick to first Test squad

By Ted Corbett

ADELAIDE Nov. 14. Australia's selectors, clearly as full of confidence as their players, have chosen an unchanged 12 for the second Test which begins here next week. None can blame them for this obvious decision even if the newspapers have predicted the introduction of a second spinner, perhaps the leg break and googly bowler Stuart MacGill or Nathan Hauritz, the 21-year-old Queensland off-spinner and former under-19 captain.

It is 11 years since Australia went to a Test on the best batting track in the country without a second spinner in its squad so it is a surprise that it has not followed this successful pattern, particularly as Mark Waugh is no longer one of its batting allrounders.

The Aussies may use Darren Lehmann as a back-up bowler but, although he has been a good performer in the English county championship and one-day matches in the last two years, at Test level the best batsmen milk his legside slow left-arm spin for easy runs and even the tailenders see little difficulty in keeping him out.

The other question concerns the selectors' intentions about Brett Lee. His Test wickets have been expensive recently as batsmen have learnt to wait for the wide long hop which, even if it is delivered at 90 miles an hour, simply flies to the boundary. So he was sent back to New South Wales when the final XI was named for the first Test with the suggestion that after four years in the Australian side it was time for him to learn his trade.

That implied he might be out of the Test team for much of this season yet, in the face of all the wisdom, Lee was named in the 12, although it is likely that he will not be required again for this Test, even if the Adelaide pitch suits his pace and bounce.

When England last played a Test at Adelaide in December 1998 — and lost by 205 runs — Australia fielded MacGill and the eccentric, hair-dying Colin Miller who also bowled seam up and England used Peter Such, Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash, almost identical slow off-spinners. They took 14 of the 35 wickets that fell to bowlers which means that the quicks were still the more lethal force. They are likely to be again.

England's inexperience is so marked that none of its bowlers have played at Adelaide. Australia has another force at large in this country; the combined force of mud-slinging reporters and sledging cricketer-columnists. In the three weeks leading up to the first Test they fired a relentless stream of poisoned arrows at England and since that defeat the barrage has increased.

England has been criticised for bringing Darren Gough and sending him home when he failed to get fit. Nasser Hussain has been damned for winning the toss and putting Australia in, for not ordering his players to the nets in the days immediately after the Test and for admitting his players were nervous.

No wonder, as he heads to Perth to see the birth of his second child this weekend, he said: "I had better send the little one home as soon as possible or he/she will start sledging me as well.''

England's major problem at the moment is the fitness of its giant allrounder Andrew Flintoff. He was fit enough to be a substitute fielder — but only at second slip — at Brisbane, but he also had a scan during the Test and afterwards Duncan Fletcher, the England coach, seemed uncertain whether he would play in Hobart this weekend against the young Australian side.

The Hobart game is his last chance before the second and third back-to-back Tests and England will be keen not to destroy the careful work since his double hernia operation by bringing him back too quickly.

Australian team for second Test: Steve Waugh (capt.), Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting, Damien Martyn, Darren Lehmann, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Andrew Bichel, Jason Gillespie, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee.

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